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CALW, GERMANY As Germany emerged from its coronavirus lockdown in May, police commandos pulled up outside a rural property owned by a sergeant major in the special forces, the countrys most highly trained and secretive unit.

They brought a digger.

The sergeant majors nickname was Little Sheep. He was suspected of being a neo-Nazi. Buried in the garden, police found 4 pounds of PETN plastic explosives, a detonator, a fuse, an AK-47, a silencer, two knives, a crossbow and thousands of rounds of ammunition much of it believed to have been stolen from the German military.

They also found an SS songbook, 14 editions of a magazine for former members of the Waffen SS and a host of other Nazi memorabilia.

Germany has a problem. For years, politicians and security chiefs rejected the notion of any far-right infiltration of the security services, speaking only of individual cases. The idea of networks was dismissed. The superiors of those exposed as extremists were protected. Guns and ammunition disappeared from military stockpiles.

The government is now waking up. Cases of far-right extremists in the military and police, some hoarding weapons and explosives, have multiplied alarmingly. The nations top intelligence officials and senior military commanders are moving to confront a problem that has become too dangerous to ignore.

The problem has deepened with the emergence of the Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, which legitimized a far-right ideology that used the arrival of more than 1 million migrants in 2015 and more recently the coronavirus pandemic to engender a sense of crisis.

Most concerning to authorities is that the extremists appear to be concentrated in the military unit that is supposed to be the most elite and dedicated to the German state, the special forces, known by their German acronym, the KSK.

This week, Germanys defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, took the drastic step of disbanding a fighting company in the KSK considered infested with extremists. Little Sheep, whom investigators have identified only as Philipp Sch., was a member.

Germanys military counterintelligence agency is now investigating more than 600 soldiers for far-right extremism, out of 184,000 in the military. Some 20 of them are in the KSK, a proportion that is five times higher than in other units.

But German authorities are concerned that the problem may be far larger and that other security institutions have been infiltrated as well. Over the past 13 months, far-right terrorists have assassinated a politician, attacked a synagogue and shot dead nine immigrants and German descendants of immigrants.

Thomas Haldenwang, president of Germanys domestic intelligence agency, has identified far-right extremism and terrorism as the biggest danger to German democracy today.

In interviews conducted over the course of the year with military and intelligence officials, as well as avowed far-right members themselves, they described nationwide networks of current and former soldiers and police officers with ties to the far right.

In many cases, soldiers have used the networks to prepare for when they predict Germanys democratic order will collapse. They call it Day X. Officials worry it is really a pretext for inciting terrorist acts, or worse, a putsch.

Ties, officials said, sometimes reach deep into old neo-Nazi networks and the more polished intellectual scene of the so-called New Right. Extremists are hoarding weapons, maintaining safe houses and in some cases keeping lists of political enemies.

But investigating the problem is itself fraught: Even the military counterintelligence agency, charged with monitoring extremism inside the armed forces, may be infiltrated.

A high-ranking investigator in the extremism unit was suspended in June after sharing confidential material from the May raid with a contact in the KSK, who in turn passed it on to at least eight other soldiers, tipping them off that the agency might turn its attention to them next.

If the very people who are meant to protect our democracy are plotting against it, we have a big problem, said Stephan Kramer, president of the domestic intelligence agency in the state of Thuringia. How do you find them? What we are dealing with is an enemy within.

The KSK are Germanys answer to the Navy SEALs. But these days their commander, Gen. Markus Kreitmayr, who has done tours in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, is a man divided between his loyalty to them and recognizing that he has a serious problem. I cant explain why there are allegedly so many cases of far-right extremism in the military, he said. The KSK is clearly more affected than others; that appears to be a fact.

For decades, Germany has tried to forge a force that represented a democratic society and its values. But in 2011 it abolished conscription and moved to a volunteer force. As a result, the military increasingly reflects not the broad society but a narrower slice of it.

Kreitmayr said that a big percentage of his soldiers are eastern Germans, a region where the AfD does disproportionately well. Roughly half the men on the list of KSK members suspected of being far-right extremists are also from the east, he added.

Officials talk of a perceptible shift in values among new recruits. In conversations, the soldiers themselves said that if there was a tipping point in the unit, it came with the migrant crisis of 2015.

As hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers from Syria and Afghanistan were making their way to Germany, the mood on the base was anxious, they recalled.

We are soldiers who are charged with defending this country, and then they just opened the borders no control, one officer recalled. We were at the limit.

It was in this atmosphere that a KSK soldier from eastern Germany, set up a Telegram chat network for soldiers, police officers and others united in their belief that the migrants would destroy the country.

His name was Andr Schmitt.

Schmitt left active service last September after stolen training grenades were found at a building belonging to his parents. But, he said, he still has his network: special forces, intelligence, business executives, Freemasons.

Several former members of his chats are now under investigation for plotting terrorism. Some were ordering body bags. One faces trial.

Schmitts situation is more complex. He acknowledged serving as an informer on the KSK for the military counterintelligence agency in mid-2017, when he met regularly with a liaison officer.

This week, the domestic intelligence agency announced that it was placing his current network, Uniter, under surveillance.

Authorities first stumbled onto his chats in 2017 while investigating a soldier in the network who was suspected of organizing a terror plot.

Investigators are now looking into whether the chats and Uniter were the early skeleton of a nationwide far-right network that has infiltrated state institutions.

Initially, Schmitt and other members said, the chats were about sharing information, much of it about the supposed threats posed by migrants.

Soon the chats morphed from sharing information to preparing for Day X. Chat members met in person, worked out what provisions and weapons to stockpile and where to keep safe houses. They practiced how to recognize each other, using military code, at pickup points where members could gather on Day X.

Schmitt, who denies planning for Day X, is still convinced that it will come. We know, thanks to our sources in the banks and in the intelligence services, that at the latest, by the end of September, the big economic crash will come, he said. People will take to the street.

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Germany faces the 'enemy within,' far-right extremists within the military - Minneapolis Star Tribune

With the UP Assembly elections less than two years away, the Congress, led by Priyanka Gandhi, is for the first time in many decades beginning to show a sense of political purpose and urgency.

After the Centre asked the UP Congress in charge to vacate her bungalow in Lutyens Delhi, news reports suggest she has decided to shift to Lucknow, perhaps to be in the thick of things. Even before this incident,Priyanka Gandhi has been a trending topic for months in the state.

She has had a spat with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on social media. In the context of the migrant crisis, Mayawati accused the Congress of doing little for the development of the weaker sections. In an obvious reference to Mayawati, Priyanka Gandhi hit back by saying some opposition leaders in UP are acting like spokespersons of the BJP.

Mass politics

Most importantly, what currently separates the Congress from other opposition parties is that the activists of the former have taken to the streets several times to agitate and confront the UP police.

Several of the Congresss local level activists, led by its state president Ajay Kumar Lallu, have been arrested. Lallu was arrested earlier when he was protesting against the UP polices decision to deny entry to buses provided by Priyanka Gandhi for migrant workers who were walking home. Earlier this week, he was arrested while protesting the arrest of Shanawaz Alam, head of the minority cell of the UP Congress.

All this is happening at a time when the lockdown is yet to be fully lifted and mandatory social distancing norms are still in place.

Can, therefore, the Congress revive its political fortunes in UP during the 2022 assembly elections? And what should be its strategy if it has to emerge as a serious electoral force in the state?

Ajay Kumar Lallu and Priyanka Gandhi. Photo: Facebook

Congress in UP: past and present

Before going further, it will be useful to briefly map the recent political trajectory of the Congress in UP and locate it in relation to other parties it will be up against.

The Congress was decimated after the Mandal and kamandal agitations in the late 1980s. Since then, the engine of UP politics has been driven by the identity politics of caste (OBCs-Dalits) and community (Hindu-Muslim). Until the 1980s, the Congresss electoral base comprised of a social coalition of Dalits-Muslims-Brahmins. This vote base shifted to the BSP and Samajwadi Party (SP), and since then the Congress has never been able to regain its political foothold in UP.

The BJP, riding on Narendra Modis popularity, Hindu-Muslim polarisation and aggressive nationalism, emerged as the top player post the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it won 71 Lok Sabha seats. Three years later, in 2017 it won a landslide victory in the UP assembly elections. And it scored a knock-out victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Since then, CM Yogi Adityanath has run the state administration in a highly personalised manner, much like the government at the Centre.

The lockdown has created immense distress. Many have lost their jobs and also face mental and physical trauma. The poor, who are mostly Dalits, OBCs and Muslims, are hardest hit. Lakhs have left cities and have returned to their villages across the state.

In UP, the Congress is the only party that has been highlighting the misery of the migrants. Can it carry this momentum all the way to the 2022 assembly elections? The Congresss leadership must acknowledge that it is handicapped on two fronts that are essential for elez|What Is the Way Forward for Priyanka Gandhi and the Congress in Up?toral success in India. One, it lacks a social coalition of caste and communities that translate into votes and two, its party organisation is broken and non-existent in most districts of UP.

The way forward

Thus the Congress needs to make moves that will help it overcome the fundamental organisational and social coalition challenges that it faces.

First, Priyanka Gandhi must lead from the front and the Congress should declare her as the chief ministerial candidate sooner rather than later. In the last few months, the manner in which Yogi Adityanath has focussed his attack on Priyanka Gandhi, a perception has been created that the Congress is the main opposition party in the state.

Chief Minister Adityanath. Photo: Reuters/Jitendra Prakash

If Priyanka Gandhi does relocate to Lucknow, it will create further unease for the BJP. Besides, such a move will send a message to the electorate at large and also instil much-required energy and confidence in the moribund Congress cadre.

Second, the Congress must inspire its cadre to take to the streets, mobilise and campaign to the masses. It needs to expose the Yogi Adityanaths crumbling administration and his mishandling of the law and order and governance. It cannot simply depend on large sections of compliant vernacular media, social media and occasional press conferences. The Congress will never be able to match the resources of the BJP and its influence in the media. It must raise the pitch of agitational politics, initiated by local leaders like Lallu. But it will have to be Priyanka Gandhi who leads from the front.

Third, assembly polls are two years away. That is still a lot of time to identify and build local level party organisation of cadres and leaders who come from Dalit, backward and minority communities. Lakhs of labourers who have returned to the villages of UP come from this social background. Their distress is only going to get exaggerated in the coming months and years. They will get more restless and angry. Many of these people formed the political base of Akhilesh and Mayawati, the former is in a stupor and the later is clearly trying to patch up with the BJP. That has created a political vacuum, ideal for the Congress to capitalise upon.

Fourth, the Congresss strategy for the 2022 assembly polls should be realistic and it must work with a modest plan. It got just about 6.3% of the votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly elections. As the old clich goes, politics in India is full of surprises, but as things stand today, the Congress should not have ambitions of forming a government in the state on its own. It should try and set itself achievable targets of increasing its vote share to 20% and target a high two-digit tally of seats. That will allow it to regain its foothold in UP politics and also create much-needed momentum to have a decisive impact in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Finally, the BJPs most potent political asset is polarisation and nationalism. The BJP would like the Congress to bat on a pitch that suits the googlies of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Ayodhya, Kashmir and Pakistan. The Congress must prepare its own track where it can challenge the BJP with bouncers of a crumbling economy, unemployment, lawlessness and the collapse of public infrastructure in UP. That is an uphill task, but entirely possible.

Jamal Kidwai is the founder of social enterprise Baragaon Weaves. He tweets @kidwaijamal.

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What's the Way Forward for Priyanka Gandhi and Congress in UP? - The Wire

Shramik trains saw migrant workers queue up at Chennai Central without proper information on schedule. Pic: Arokya Inian

As an extended lockdown was announced by the center and state to curtail the spread of COVID-19, little did I imagine that we would be witness to a humanitarian crisis of this scale, created by the Governments both state and centre. Agreed that this killer contagion was nasty but to use that as a cover to deny any assistance to the migrants is a sheer act of cruelty.

Having lost their livelihood and jobs, migrants, who power our cities, found themselves staring at an uncertain future, facing hunger, fearing disease and caught in an alien state with language issues. Under the circumstances, the least that the state could do was provide them reasonable assurance that they would be taken care of, or that safe passage to their homes would be ensured.

The first hurdle was that guest workers in Chennai were not eligible for cash or groceries provided by the state government as they did not possess valid ration cards. The Greater Chennai Corporation too made the decision to stop provision of cooked food by NGOs before going back on its decision after realizing the scale of the crisis.

Next came the travel crisis. With no support, no clear communication, no refuge, the migrants decided to go home. With all modes of transport banned and those available too expensive, they started walking in the searing heat of Chennai summer.

When the numbers swelled and accidents and deaths happened amongst those walking, hundreds of workers were stopped at the Andhra Pradesh state border by the police and sent back. The TN police too abandoned them by the side of highways, far away from any help. Much of this happened under the cover of dark.

Some workers tried hiring buses, with only 30 passengers allowed per bus. The charges, too, were exorbitant: a trip to Odisha cost Rs 5000 and one to UP was Rs 7500.Travel permits had to be obtained from both exit and destination states, making it an uphill task.

Even as they came close to home, a 14-day quarantine awaited before they could actually enter their village. Very soon, exit passes were reduced to 25 or even 20 passengers per bus, which made the already high cost unaffordable: Rs 7000 for Odisha and upwards of Rs 10000 for Uttar Pradesh.

As news of the issues faced by migrants blew up, the pressure from media, courts and civil society forced the government to run trains and to provide shelter to migrants stranded on roads. Under pressure, the Chennai Corporation started opening relief camps to accommodate the stranded, andensure food, water, sanitation and health.

But there was no proper communication on the camp locations and how to get in, leaving the workers in the dark once again. Accommodation in the camps was largely arbitrary.

Relying on NGOs

Rajesh Sharma, Pramod Kumar and their group of 40+ workers from villages near Nalanda, Bihar were living in Velachery. After they lost their jobs, they survived on meal handouts on the main road once a day. Desperate for help, they reached out to our volunteer group on May 19th. We were able to arrange groceries through NGO No Food Waste for a few days. They had sought help from local police and the Bihar association too, but to no avail. On May 23rd, about 30 people were lucky to get on a train and leave for Bihar, but 10 workers could not. Their wait continued until we were informed on June 26th that the group had finally managed to reach home three months after the lockdown began, after harrowing times in the city where they had hoped to secure their future.

The plight of those outside Greater Chennai Corporation limits was even more pathetic, with no relief centres in Chengalpet, Kancheepuram. For those who lost shelter provided by employers or their rented homes, there was nowhere to go. Thiruvallur was better off as there was plenty of outcry from NGOs and volunteers at the AP border.

Meanwhile special Shramik trains began to run, with uncertainty on who would bear the costs. Registrations (not reservations) were open, but there was no way to track when workers would get their chance, if at all they would.

There was no timetable or tickets. The lucky ones got a message and could board a train, most of the time it was those in relief camps who were rushed in buses and dropped off at railway stations. With all options closed, many workers started assembling at the station only to be driven away or bundled into the backroads, awaiting their destiny on footpaths for days at a stretch.

Even those who managed to get on a train could not breathe a sigh of relief, as many long-distance trains had no provision for food and drinking water. The delays meant two-day journeys were taking twice the amount of time, with plenty of diversions and redirections.

Slipping through the cracks

On May 17th two groups of about 30 migrant workers, mostly from Bihar and Jharkhand, were intercepted by the police from AP border late at night. Some of them were on GST Highway near Maraimalai Nagar while others were stranded on Bengaluru Highway near Sriperumbudur.

Two others, Arjun Kumar and Mohan Singh were stranded without help for three days, with only assistance from a passerby for food and stay at a roadside eatery. Arjun managed to walk from there, take trucks, cycle, and use other modes of transportto finally reach Bihar.Mohans whereabouts are still not known to those who tried to assist him.

The second group of 18 (including workers Deepak Chauhan, Anu Kumar, Jitender Kumar) from Jharkhand had no jobs anymore and had to vacate their rooms. On May 24th they managed to reach Central Station, upon hearing that there was a train for Jharkhand. But that was not to be and they ended up waiting in the streets. With the help of volunteers they were directed to a relief centre near Elephant gate police station

Similar issues were faced by the group stranded in Maraimalai Nagar. The current status of many of these workers is not known to the volunteer groups that aided them. The sheer number of workers in need of help has been overwhelming.

There were no stops along the way and the few shops where the migrants could look for food or water were all closed. There was no assistance from NGOs either during the journey. Most of the migrant workers we spoke to seemed to be overpowered by emotions triggered by hunger and the fear of death.

What was the crime committed by these migrant workers? That they were not a vote bank? That they moved in search of livelihoods? And why did their native states, and even the centre, display such careless, callous and often sadistic attitude towards these lives?

The truth remains that this nation, which prides itself on modernization and self sufficiency, failed to help its most-needy citizens making them feel unwelcome in their own country. If not for the many NGOs, civil society and volunteer groups and kind hearted donors, the situation would have been much worse.

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Comment: COVID-19 aside, migrant crisis in city has exposed the huge gaps in governance - Citizen Matters, Chennai

Danny Glover was recently a juror and mentor at Turkeys virtual International Migration Film Festival, for which he took a deep dive into films tackling the plight of migrants around the world from his home in San Francisco, just as protests over the death of George Floyd escalated in the U.S.

The actor-writer-producer and passionate political activist spoke to Variety about how hes been associating the current global migrant crisis with the historical roots of violence against African Americans in the U.S. The screen icon, known for classics such as Places in the Heart, The Color Purple and the Lethal Weapon franchise, also discussed his parallel career as a producer of socially relevant films by global auteurs, such as Cannes Palme dOr winner Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives, and why Lethal Weapon 5 should come back within the political framework that we are in.

As an American citizen, we see glimpses of it on the news, and we know that there is a crisis happening. We see the actual reporting. But we dont understand the entire stories that are engaged, and the historic nature of those stories, particularly in Afghanistan, which weve heard so much about. So (in Just Like My Son, by Costanza Quatriglio), the story of a young man trying to find his mother after not seeing her for years and years, its a touching personal story. And it has its own power, with respect to seeing it in a much larger context. That personal story has a much stronger impact in understanding the crisis that we are inYou see the magnitude of the crisis, yet we are immune to it in this country. In America, there is a kind of certainty of expectations that the government is able to protect you, to some extent. Except in some neighborhoods, in some communities.

There is an outcry after the murder of George Floyd or there is an outcry after Eric Garner which in some sense is expecting resolution in this country. But the question of migrants has existed internally in this country.

As an African descendant from enslaved Africans who either escaped as migrants, and after the Civil War and after they were freed became constitutional citizens they still were forced to migrate to various places in the country to escape the violence that they themselves experienced. The emotional and physical violence; the lynchings and murders. They were internal migrants within the country itself. Even though the country posed this certainty for other citizens, it didnt pose this kind of certainty for them.

So when I saw these different stories they made me think about this. You think about mothers sending their daughters away once they became 13 and [when] white men and white boys started looking at them. They sent them from the South somewhere North or somewhere else where they could be safe. This is something that is not often expounded upon in our historical narratives. Or parents of young boys having them leave the South because of the possibility of their being lynched. Or escaping the violence that is unscripted in the 400 years of this countrys history towards enslaved Africans, or formerly enslaved Africans.

It has to be seen. We dont know whats going to happen in this particular moment. The resources and the allocations that are going to be thrown at this; the choices that are going to be made are going to be numerous. But the violence that we see whether its the toxic places where they (black people) live; the inadequacy of health care for them; whether its the lack of affordable housing; the absence of jobs at living wages; all those things thats basically going unseen. We see the actual violence because the police is what it is. Its the last line line of defense for white supremacy. Thats what the police represents. They dont protect African Americans. You can make an argument that the institutional violence has its roots in so many different ways. The violence that we see now that is acted out on the physical body of George Floyd has been the kind of violence that is engrained within the American idea of its culture, in its own subtlety, since the first Africans were brought here. So its 400 years of violence. Its not just now!

As James Baldwin said: when we cannot tell ourselves the truth about our past, we become trapped in it.This country has been trapped in its past and continues to be. Its even trapped in its past in terms of First Nations people. We never hear about the violence on First Nations people.

What does real change look like? Thats the question at a moment in time when we shape the images of change, and they might not be the kind of substantial changes, qualitative changes and transformative changes that are necessary.

It may be a democratization of what I call cultural production. Cultural production looks at: how do people live? How do we understand each other? What are the elements that bring us together and form the whole idea of the responsibilities that we have to each other as human beings? How do those kinds of stories evolve? It must not only happen within my business. It has to happen in concert with all the kinds of relationships that we have. We have to be honest about that. As I said before, we cant be honest about what we are. We fantasize about what we think should be changed. What does that mean?

I think we started having a different sense of African Americans [on screen] when the civil rights movement came about. The new images of African Americans presented by Hollywood came through avenues that were opened because of singular artists at the time. Sidney Poitier changed the whole image of African Americans. Every one of us: me, Morgan [Freeman], Denzel [Washington], Sam [Samuel Jackson] we are descendants of the images presented by Sidney Poitier!

I think there has to be some sort of sound way, because we cant go back to just anythingIn terms of saying: we are going back to the past. We cant go back.

Those people who are white and Black and brown and gay and LGBTQ all of them are saying, as they march in the streets: we cant go back! Thats the message thats on the street right now.

I had the advantage when I started out of doing the plays of the great South African writer Athol Fugard as my foundation for looking at cultural production. And that was in the midst of the Anti-Apartheid movement and the Free Mandela movement. Ive also had this fascination about world cinema. When I was working, I would often go to arthouses and watch world cinema.

So the idea that came around with Joslyn Barnes started by talking about the Haitian Revolution. Now somebody might have thought that was a rock band, but there was a Haitian Revolution [led by Toussaint Louverture]. Haiti was the first nation ever to be formed by formerly enslaved Africans who defeated the Spanish, defeated the French, defeated the British. Thats how the conversation started.

Then we talked about our interest in world cinema. And we began to say: how do we put emphasis on this issue? So we put emphasis on storytellers. Elia Suleiman, Palestinian, one of the great filmmakers in the world. How do we get involved in that?

Apichatpong [Weerasethakul] from Thailand, Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives. Brilliant. I could have shown that movie to my grandmother, who was born in 1895, and she would have gotten it! My grandparents, they would talk about past lives; about visions. They would sometimes scare the hell out of me as kid! And so those are the kind of things that we were able to do.

There are things that Ive done that are no doubt important. The Beloved is an important film; an extraordinary film. The Color Purple is an important film. Places in the Heart, with Sally Field, is an important film for me. They moved my career in a lot of ways, but they were important for me to do. Because they were also expressions of part of that psychic history thats in my bones, that comes from my great-grandmother, who was born in 1858. All that history is a part of me. So being able to do those films is a way of exploring that part of myself.

But also the opportunity to have a franchise film, and to try to do something with that franchise film. And thats basically what Richard Donner and the creators of Lethal Weapon did. One [film] was about drug proliferation; one was about arms proliferation. One focused on South Africa. Theres value in that as well.

There has been a conversation about that in January. I dont want to give away the plot on the script that I read, but I found the plot had very strong relevance to some of things that are happening today. I can say that. But that was in January. History changes so fastBut yes, theres been talk about it. There is something of a plan.

Yes, I liked it. I can only tell you, if it does happen, there is something extraordinary in it. If Lethal Weapon gives us some sort of contribution to understanding a little bit moreIt would be interesting to do. It would be interesting to see how we take this within the political framework we are in; the economic framework that we are in. And especially that framework as opposed to the communities that have been affected by the kind of police violence, the kind of police standards, and the power that they exert as well. And what would be interesting from that vantage point is what that attempt could be like at this particular moment.

And maybe it will attempt to confront the issue head on, within whatever script comes out.

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Danny Glover on George Floyd and Possibly Reviving Lethal Weapon (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

Written by C Rangarajan, S Mahendra Dev | Updated: July 3, 2020 9:40:02 am The first proposal of providing cash transfers to women above 20 costs Rs 1.72 crore (0.84 per cent of GDP). (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

In the post corona crisis situation, India has to address many problems, of which two stand out. First, the improvement of our healthcare system and second, the need for the institution of a scheme to provide minimum income support to the weak and vulnerable groups. In this article, we address the second issue.

There has been considerable discussion on universal basic income (UBI) in recent years. It is true that a universal scheme is easy to implement. Feasibility is the critical question. The Congress had suggested NYAY to help the poor. The problem with non-universal targeted programmes is the problem of identification. Narrowly-targeted programmes will run into complex problems of identification and give rise to exclusion and inclusion errors.

In order to avoid the identification problem, we have three proposals which meet the objective of providing a minimum basic income to the poor and vulnerable groups in both rural and urban areas. These are: One, give cash transfers to all women above the age of 20 years; two, expand the number of days provided under MGNREGA and three, have a national employment guarantee scheme in urban areas. In all the three proposals, there is no problem of identification. A combination of cash transfers and an expanded employment guarantee scheme can provide a minimum basic income.

On the proposal of cash transfers, one way of doing it will be to give it to all women say above the age of 20. This is an easily identifiable criterion because the Aadhaar cards carry the age of the person. The female population above the age of 20 is around 42.89 crore. Making available a minimum of Rs 4,000 annually as a cash transfer to all of them will cost Rs 1.72 lakh crore 0.84 per cent of GDP. This is in addition to the income from an expanded MGNREGA as given below. The cost of the scheme to the government will be less if the well-off women choose not to take the cash transfer.

The second and third approaches are expanding MGNREGA in rural areas and introducing an employment guarantee programme in urban areas respectively. At present, MGNREGA is availed of only for 50 days of employment, although the Act guarantees 100 days of employment. One way to help the poor and informal workers is to strengthen it. We have two proposals here. The first is to increase the number of days under the scheme from 100 to 150 in rural areas. The second is to introduce an Employment Guarantee Act in urban areas and provide employment for 150 days. In 2019-20, the government spent Rs 67,873 crore for providing 48 days of employment to 5.48 crore of rural households. Out of this, the wage expenditure was Rs 48,762 crore.

The government has increased the per day wage rate from Rs 182.1 in 2019-20 to Rs 202.5 in 2020-21. Using this wage rate, we estimate the expenditure for 150 days of employment to 5.48 crore households in rural areas and 2.66 crore households in urban areas together they account for 33 per cent of total households in the country. As shown in the table, the total wage expenditure for 150 days is Rs 2.47 lakh crore (1.21 per cent of GDP) while total expenditure (wages and materials) is Rs 3.21 lakh crore (1.58 per cent of GDP) in 2020-21. It may be noted that this estimate includes the current expenditure of generating around 50 days of employment in rural areas which is already committed by the government. Therefore, the proposed additional expenditure for 150 days of employment in both rural and urban areas would be Rs 1.91 lakh crore (0.94 per cent of GDP) as wage expenditure and Rs 2.48 lakh crore (1.22 per cent of GDP) as total expenditure on wages and materials. In other words, the additional expenditure needed for our proposal is Rs 1.9 to 2.5 lakh crore, around 1 to 1.22 per cent of GDP.

Apart from expanding rural MGNREGA, we are proposing a nation-wide urban employment guarantee scheme to improve livelihoods. The design can be slightly different from MGNREGA. In urban areas, employment can be provided to both unskilled and semi-skilled workers as there is demand for the latter workers also.

The first proposal of providing cash transfers to women above 20 costs Rs 1.72 crore (0.84 per cent of GDP). The total cost on MGNREGA for providing 150 days of employment in rural areas and the cost for 150 days of work for the Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme is around Rs 3.21 crore in a year (1.58 per cent of GDP). The total cost of the three proposals would be Rs 4.9 lakh crore or 2.4 per cent of GDP. A person working in MGNREGA and in the urban programme can get Rs 30,000 if 150 days are provided.

It may be noted, however, that the total expenditure of the proposals could be lower due to two reasons. First, the number of days availed by the employment guarantee programmes could be lower as it is a demand-based programme. This is happening even now. Second, on cash transfers, some women, particularly from richer classes, may voluntarily drop out of the scheme or alternatively, we can provide that everyone receiving cash transfer must declare that her total monthly income is less than Rs 6,000 per month. In addition, it may be noted that the government is already incurring a total expenditure of Rs 67,873 crore on MGNREGA.

The feasibility of raising an additional Rs 4.2 lakh crore is not an easy one. Some analysts have suggested that we can remove all exemptions in our tax system and that would give enough money. Apart from the difficulties in removing all exemptions, tax experts advocate removing exemptions so that the basic tax rate can be reduced. Perhaps, out of the Rs 4.2 lakh crore which is needed, Rs 1 lakh crore can come out of phasing out of some of the expenditures, while another Rs 3 lakh crore must come out of raising additional revenue. Some of the non-merit subsidies, another item of expenditure, can be eliminated.

To conclude, in the post-COVID-19 situation, we need to institute schemes to provide a minimum income for the poor and vulnerable groups. For this purpose, we propose here cash transfers for women, increasing MGNREGA from the present 100 days of work to 150 days in rural areas and the introduction of 150 days of work as an urban employment guarantee scheme. This will cost around 2 per cent of GDP and will help the poor, informal workers, including the migrant workers, significantly reducing poverty.

This article first appeared in the print edition on June 3, 2020 under the title A safety net, post Covid. Rangarajan is former chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and former Governor, RBI. Dev is director and vice-chancellor, IGIDR, Mumbai.

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A safety net, post Covid: We need to provide minimum income for poor and vulnerable - The Indian Express